We hope you’re having a blast getting ready for Halloween. We are. We love pumpkin carving and especially like to see families gathering around the ultra-sharp kitchen implements and working together as a group. It’s a great time for everyone to show their creativity in bringing forth a scary or funny pumpkin. Pumpkin carving is also a creative activity that can yield some pretty impressive results with a little bit of extra effort beyond slicing out triangular eyes and a jagged mouth. For instance, carving an image onto a pumpkin’s face at different depths into the flesh (letting through different amounts of light) can be very effective. Or, you can add smaller gourds for eyes, ears, and horns, branches for arms, etc.

One person who’s taken pumpkin carving to dizzying heights is our pal Ray Villafane. We’ve covered Ray’s work here on numerous occasions. Always looking to teach people the joys of gourd (and gourd-like squash) sculpting, Ray graciously gave us five copies of his pumpkin carving DVD to give away here on MAKE.

So, here’s the deal. We want to see your pumpkin designs. Between now and Monday, Nov. 4th (11:59pm PT), load images of your pumpkins to your Google+ page and hashtag them with #makepumpkins. We’ll draw five entries and the winners will get Ray’s pumpkin how-to DVD. Good luck, and get a-carvin’!

If you need some inspiration, here are some posts from MAKE on pumpkin carving:

Gareth Branwyn is a freelancer writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor for Boing Boing and WINK Books. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.